We are a painting contractor in California. We have been working on a project directly with a homeowner. We have a signed contract, and a Preliminary Notice. Our client's last progress payment check bounced. We found out that she has a history of issues with contractors, so we were dreading this. Her deposit and previous 2 payments went through, so we were hopeful. We stopped work 50 days ago, awaiting payment. However, we have 45 hours that we have not invoiced her for when we were initially continuing with the work. To clarify, for example, we invoiced her for $10,000 on 4/13. We continued to work through 4/24, and then stopped working until we received payment. She paid 6/6, but the check bounced. Am I understanding correctly that we need to wait for 60 days cessation in order to consider that the Date of Completion, before we can file a Mechanic's Lien? Can we include the 45 hours that weren't in the invoice? Should we invoice her for those now? Should we consider the date of cessation as the last actual day we worked there (4/24), or the last day that we invoiced her for (4/13)? If we still need to wait for another 10 days until 60 days have passed since we ceased work, I plan to send her a Notice of Intent to see if that might get her to correct the issue. Also, she is not yet occupying the house. Thank you in advance for your help!